My Laptop has died HELP

[gulliver1]

My laptop is a Samsung R510 Vista 4 years old.
This morning when I switched it on it came up samsung and then
Boot from AHC1 CD Rom in black and white writing with a black screen,
and nothing else, I disconnected the battery and reconnected still the same,
anyone had this happen to them.

[slinky.kate]

One option is to restore factory settings but you will lose all your files and settings etc. so if there is nothing you need to keep then just google restore factory settings for Samsung R510 computer and do what it tells you./

If the files are important, and you haven't backed them up you will need to find someone more specialist who can work out what the problem is.

[gulliver1]

Thank you fo your reply, but my screen is blank on the laptop, I am now on my desktop, does it sound like hardware problems to you.

[SlackAlice]

first off, make sure you haven't left a CD in the drive. If you have take it out and try a re-boot.

[gulliver1]

I phoned a technician, he said it sounds like I need a new hard drive, and it will
cost about 80 pounds + labour, thats without even seeing it, can you repair
a hard drive or do you always have to have a new one

[Tuvok]

Check that you don't have a usb flash/pen drive installed - some do cause computers to think the wrong system is installed.

Also, check your bios - it could be that the computer is set to boot from the cd drive.

Try booting from the installation cd/dvd - it could be that you need to to a repair install of Windows. Becarefull that you are not using a recovery disk - it may not give you the option to do anythin other than restore to factory settings - ie. WIPE everything!

Since you have access to the internet, you can look up the relevant way of doing a repair install for your version of windows.

Another option is create a linux system that can run from a usb flash/pen drive - that way you may be able to access the hard disk to backup/rescue any files etc.